white limozeen, broadway, a cautionary tale, and the nights we went out anyway — nashville, tennessee
nashville is the kind of city where you can book a flight on tuesday and by thursday you’re at american junkie with a cheap beer in your hand and a live band doing exactly what a live band is supposed to do — making you forget you had anywhere else to be.
that is the invitation. and nashville means it.
this is not a city that requires a month of planning or a carefully curated itinerary. it takes you how you are. no judgment. just cold beer, live music, and a broadway strip that runs on the understanding that everybody showed up to have a good time and that’s enough.
it was booked on a tuesday for a thursday, because flights are cheaper on tuesdays — brokish & boujee, always. my friend donna and i had been talking about nashville the way you talk about things you keep almost doing. and then one tuesday we stopped saying eventually and just booked it. two days later we were there. my old friend sylvia happened to be in town the same weekend for a bachelorette. nashville has a way of pulling everyone in at once.
before i take you through any of it, i want to call something out. consider this your situational awareness briefing before we go any further.
this post is a travel post and it is also a cautionary tale. your future self will thank you for reading the whole thing.
just because you’re on vacation, or in a group, or in a fun city, or making restroom besties with a stranger in line — none of that means the person next to you has good intentions. some people are there specifically because you’re having a good time. they count on the good mood, the open energy, the fact that you’ve had a couple drinks in a city you don’t know and you’re feeling generous and trusting.
no one owes you anything. most people are fine. but some people take that first part literally — and they will smile at you while they do it.
if you don’t know what situational awareness actually means — what to look for, what the tells are, what triggers should put you on notice — i invite you to visit Decision Tactical. we’ll give you the basics for spotting a threat before it becomes your problem. be smart, be safe, and take care of each other.
women especially. no mamen. cuídense. hay gente culera out here and they will find you in a bathroom line in nashville on a tuesday night.
keep reading. i’ll show you exactly what it looked like.
jason aldean’s rooftop. multi-level, loud, the kind of bar that exists because nashville is serious about giving people options for looking out over broadway while holding a drink. we were looking out over broadway holding drinks. while we were waiting to be seated, donna and i got to talking with a couple in line — husband and wife, easy conversation, the kind of small talk that happens when you’re all standing in the same city waiting for a good time.
when donna and i got in line for the restroom, the wife was there too. normal. just three women waiting in line.
there was another woman in that restroom. she was listening.
when we came back out to the table — donna, me, the husband, the wife — this woman appeared. brought a round of shots. friendly, chatty, armed with just enough of our conversation to seem like she belonged. she had a whole routine going: something she overheard, something to connect on, something to keep us looking at her. we accepted. we kept talking.
that was the point.
because while she had our attention — yapping, performing, keeping our eyes forward — her partner came in behind us. where our bags were. working quietly. the whole thing was choreographed: one woman in your face, one woman at your back. one distraction, one disappearing act.
within the hour, i was incapacitated.
i had been roofied.
what they didn’t count on was the husband at that table. he turned out to be law enforcement. a LEO. and he saw it — the second woman circling, the setup, the whole picture. he shut it down. and then he suggested we all leave together. as a group. safely.
so the four of us left jason aldean’s together and made our way to white limozeen.
i have photos from white limozeen. if you look at my face in them, you can see it. i’m present enough to be standing, not present enough to be all the way there. that is what those photos actually are — a dazed woman at one of the prettiest rooftops in nashville, being kept upright by strangers who owed her nothing and showed up anyway.
what white limozeen is, under normal circumstances, is stunning. the rooftop bar at the graduate hotel — glamorous, pink, nashville-brained in the best possible way. a giant dolly parton sculpture made of woven mesh that somehow manages to look soft, because dolly has that effect on everything. a flower wall inside that says ‘you’re like, really pretty!’ in neon. it is correct. i intend to go back and experience it properly. it has earned that.
from white limozeen, we went back to the hotel. i passed out. donna stayed. when i came back to myself the first thing i wanted was a cold beer — which tells you everything you need to know about ruffy dehydration, which is its own category of dehydration and should be treated as such. we went out — because nashville was not going to have that be the ending.
both women are in my photos from that night. smiling. standing there like part of the fun. i know exactly what they look like. i know exactly what they did.
the next morning was biscuit love — eggs on a proper biscuit, iced coffee, donna across the table looking like someone who had also earned her breakfast. the city was still there, completely unbothered. we started again.
then hattie b’s hot chicken in midtown. i love spice. i am a spice person. i knew what i was ordering. it burnt my mouth. it burnt my lips. the lines are long. grab a snack. i went full send. i regret nothing. el pin**e pollo pica — con aviso no hay engaño.
the hot chicken probably did not help with the ruffy dehydration.
redneck riviera that evening — donna and i, smiling, drinks in hand, fully ourselves again. tecovas if you’re in that part of the city — every boot in stock, and they do personalization.
and then there was the drag bus. a tour bus full of queens and passengers who came to be entertained and got exactly that. nashville delivering on every single promise.
between the last two nights we covered a lot of ground — tootsie’s orchid lounge, the second fiddle, the stage, nudies, dirty little secrets, good time bar, dierks bentley’s whiskey row, friends in low places bar (yes, garth’s — yes, it lives up), casa rosa (miranda lambert’s, and yes she understood the assignment), and back to redneck riviera. we did not come to nashville to sit still.
sylvia was out there somewhere too, on broadway with her bachelorette crew. being in the same city as people you love, even briefly, even parallel — that’s its own kind of good.
i laughed so hard those nights i felt like i was reclaiming something. which i was. donna was there for all of it. before the bad part and after it. that is what a real travel companion looks like.
say yes to nashville. be smart about how. that’s all i’m asking.
eat the biscuit. survive the hot chicken. stand in front of dolly. dance on broadway. stay on the drag bus until the last stop.
and cover your cup.
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